


But It Ain't Me, Babe

by dolamrotha



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-15 10:22:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16061117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dolamrotha/pseuds/dolamrotha
Summary: An AU in which Roslin Frey and Robb Stark are caught in a fake-dating plan gone awry; Roslin is hopelessly and silently in love with Robb’s ridiculously young uncle, Edmure Tully; and Robb is falling swiftly but surely in love with someone he’s sure his family would never approve of.





	1. There Are Many Kinds of Love in This World

**Author's Note:**

> This first chapter is mostly just a bit of mood-set. I have no idea how long this will be? It's all a great big unknown, my friends. To me as much as you. :)

Roslin has always thought it a terrible shame, that she wasn’t in love with her boyfriend. At least then their situation might have been even a little bit poetic. A little Lady-of-Shalott, although (one could hope) without the death. A lonely girl turned pining girl. All unrequited love and riverbanks. 

Instead, she’s curled up beneath a tree with the taste of cider on her lips, a book open on her knee, and her head pillowed on her boyfriend’s leg as his fingers idly play with a strand of her hair. 

Robb Stark is just about everything a girl could wish for in a boyfriend. His auburn curls and deep blue eyes and handsome features are nothing compared to the rest of him: his kindness, his great and unending love for his family. He has a smile that can melt or break or mend a heart, and he likes to roll about on the floor with his massive dog as though he’s a litter-mate. He’s smart and he’s compassionate, and there’s something about him of an old-fashioned gentleman that suits Roslin’s own old-fashioned and ladylike habits. 

They were a perfect match. On paper, maybe:

 Roslin’s gentleness for Robb’s strength; Roslin’s patience for his passion. In reality, they were still a perfect match, but only if you matched them as friends. As some sort of deeply-platonic-soulmate. 

They loved each other deeply, but they had never fallen in love. Not even after two years of dating. 

Two years, Roslin muses with a hum. Could it have been so long? 

What had begun as a bit of Roslin’s father’s own brand of blackmail had spiraled out of control somewhere after their first date, and soon enough they’d found themselves with no way out. No way out that would save honor and duty and family and every other thing either of them valued. 

“What are you thinking of, Finch?”   


The old nickname makes her smile, looking up at him slant-wise from her rest upon his leg. 

“Only that this is nice,” she says, and it’s not a quite a lie. Robb chuckles, still gently stroking her hair as though he doesn’t realize he’s doing it.   


“Imagine what it would be like if we were in love with each other.”   


Roslin’s giggle is a silvery, rippling thing, as mild as pond water disturbed by a pebble. 

“I imagine it would be even nicer.”   


His chuckle is replaced with a sigh, and his hand comes to rest upon her head. 

“I did try, you know. To…”   


“I know. I did, too.” 

Silence, then. Just the sound of their breaths, the birds that chirp in the tree overhead. It’s not unhappy silence, she thinks. Not really. It’s companionable, maybe just tinged with melancholy

“Roslin?”   


She had just started to doze when he said her name, making her blink her eyes open again. 

“Mhmm?”   


“I do love you, you know.”   


Her smile is sweet, and she reaches out to grab his other hand, giving it a squeeze. “I love you too, Robb.”  


But love had many kinds: a brother for his sister. A friend for a friend. A lover for a lover. Theirs had always been something of the first and of the second. In any other world but theirs (all ambition and parents with plans, all family duty and sacrifices asked of people too young) it would have been a blessing. In their world, it was only the first part of a larger problem. 

The second part of the problem was this: they were both in love with someone else…and both with someone they could never have. 

“It’ll be okay,” she hears him whisper as his fingers thread through her hair again. She’s not sure if he’s talking to her or to himself, or if it’s in entreaty to the gods his family worships. “We’ll be okay.”   


And, Seven help her, it makes her want to cry. 


	2. Nothing Good Ever Happens After Midnight

On Thursdays, they get milkshakes. She doesn't really remember how it started: on a whim, maybe, the first Thursday. And somehow it had become a habit of Thursdays. That's the whole ritual, really, just the milkshakes. The "getting" part is essential, too. They never make the milkshakes, they always buy them. Different flavors, different times, different places, but they always get milkshakes. 

Which is how they wound up at a tiny local diner at one o'clock in the morning, the buzz of one too many gin and tonics still a pleasant haze on her mind. She sits across from Robb, her high-heeled shoes kicked off beneath the table, bare feet propped up on Robb's knee (the opposite booth where he sits is just a touch too far for her height). The little cheery ding! of her phone tells her that the tapping on his phone means he'd posted the picture they'd taken at the beginning of the night: Roslin tucked under his arm, drinks in hand, laughing. It'll have a hundred likes by the time they get home, a thousand by the time she's slept, woken, made coffee. There will be dozens of comments containing only the heart-eyed emoji, dozens more of only hearts and thumbs up. 

Roslin yawns, stirs at her cookie-dough milkshake, takes another sip. She knows some people might be bothered by it: the silence between them. The fact that they're just sitting there, not talking, that Robb's attention is currently on his phone screen, but she's always liked this part of their relationship. She's always liked that they're both as comfortable with quiet as they are with speaking to one another, that Robb always knows exactly when he should be looking at her and when he can scroll through whatever feed he wants. She's always known the same. Her family home had always been abuzz with needless noise, and they had both grown up with social situations that required endless smiles and conversations that they didn't really want to have. 

Over the last two years, they'd grown so comfortable with each other that sharing secrets, thoughts, everything and nothing, seemed as natural as breathing. So, too, did the opposite. 

"Are you still working tomorrow?" Robb asked, setting his phone down on the table and pulling his own glass toward him. "Not calling in sick?" 

"No," Roslin said, nudging his knee with her foot. "I can't." 

"You can," he said with a grin, shaking his knee in retaliation, almost-but-not-quite upsetting her footrest. "You just won't. Even if you wake up hungover and all that screeching gives you a headache." 

"The kids don't _screech_ , Robb." 

His grin is just a little too confident, and though she wants to scowl at him, she's never been the scowling sort...and his grin has always been infectious. The kind of infectious that had had her smiling her full smile at him from the start, not hiding it behind a hand to veil the gap between her two front teeth. 

"They don't! They're just...in need of practice." 

Her job as music teacher seemed to be an endless source of amusement for him, as though the thought of young children armed with musical instruments required more bravery than she would admit to. 

"Why? What are _you_ doing tomorrow?" 

He leans back in the booth with his arm stretched along its back, perfectly at ease. Roslin has already seen the looks the waitresses are throwing them, the same looks women everywhere seem to give them. She gets it, she does. She even smiles at them sweetly when she catches them at it, as though to say _go on, there are no hard feelings._ She wonders if it comes across as saccharine, or even over-confident. Like she's jealous and pretending not to be. 

"I plan on hitting the snooze button until Grey Wind insists on me getting up," he says. "Then I'll meet Jon in the office later on." 

"You're spoiled," she tells him, though there's nothing but affection in her voice - it's not a scolding. "I do hope you know that." 

"Hey, now," he says, the grin softening at its edges, though not quite slipping (they both know it isn't true, that this little luxury of sleeping in on Friday morning is one of the few he allows himself). "I'm not the one who _**chose** _ to teach at a school, now, am I?" 

Before she can say anything in reply, the door to the diner swings open, admits a crowd of young men and women just a few years older than Roslin. The door chimes are drowned in their noise: laughter and chatter, voices obviously louder than normal, some of them notably slurred or shrilled by alcohol. 

And in the midst of all of it, there's a pair of Tully-blue eyes that find Roslin's as though drawn by some inevitable force, and she feels her stomach drop like a leaden weight. _Edmure,_ his arms slung around the shoulders of two pretty women, his smile slipping when he sees Roslin notice. There's guilt in those eyes, and something like defiance, and a longing that pierces her straight through. 

Her breath catches in her throat, the gin catches up to her, and she feels the whole world spinning around her like a carousel of laughing voices and blue eyes. 

"What in..." 

Robb turns and she sees Edmure raise a hand in greeting, and if they don't get out of here right now, she's sure he'll be over here in another moment, likely bringing his friends along with him, and she doesn't think she can stand it. 

"Robb....?" Her voice comes out choked, and it catches him at once. He turns back to her with worry in his eyes that deepens to a frown when he sees the tears gathered up in her eyes. 

"Roslin? What is it, what's wrong?" 

"I..." Edmure's still looking at her, she knows, stealing glances when he thinks she might be looking, but she's focused just on Robb. "I don't....feel so well. Can we go, now?" 

Robb's eyes search her face, and his hand lands on the feet still resting on his lap, gives her ankle a gentle squeeze. Whatever he's found in the expression of her face, he doesn't question or doubt it. Instead, he fishes out money from his wallet, drops it on the table and stands, holds out his hand for her as she slips her feet into her shoes and slips out of the booth. His arm comes around her shoulders, hand settles protectively around her upper arm as he leads them from the diner and out into the night. She keeps her head ducked down, eyes on her shoes as though afraid of tripping, until they're safely through the door. 

It isn't until they're settled in his car, still sitting in the parking lot: engine running, that he asks her anything at all: 

"Roslin?" It's just her name, said so gently that it seems to strike her in the stomach, drives the air from her with nothing but two syllables. The tears spill from her eyes, then, as though just waiting for this moment. "Roslin." He reaches across the arm-rest for her hand, and she clings to it gratefully. "What is it? What's wrong?" 

He doesn't know. He doesn't know because she hasn't told him, hasn't said a word. She hasn't known how. 

She shakes her head mutely, tries to brush the tears from her eyes. 

"Not here," she whispers, looking up at the diner where - - through the windows - - they can still see Edmure and his friends. "Please..." 

For a long, long moment he only looks at her, then traces her gaze to the diner windows, and she could swear she saw something like understanding spark to life in the blue of his eyes. He glances back at her one last time, but he nods, puts the car in reverse and drives them away. 

Her tears don't quite fade until she's watched the diner fade in the rearview mirror and they're on the roads leading back to her suburban apartment. 

* * *

They don't speak again until they're through the complex's gates, until Robb parks the car in a visitor's spot. 

"Roslin." He takes her hand again, but this time it seems less comforting than anchoring, as though he's holding her fast to keep her from flying away. "Are you going to tell me what's going on, here, or am I going to have to ask Edmure?" 

She startles at the sound of his name, blinking up at him with wide brown eyes. Robb's chuckle is a sad one, but his eyes are soft, and he reaches out to tuck loose strands of hair behind her ear. 

"You were just fine until he walked in, Finch. Did you think I wouldn't figure it out?" 

There's a blush spreading on her cheeks, she can feel it, and she lowers her eyes from his as she shakes her head. 

"Robb, I'm sorry..." 

"You've got nothing to be sorry for." The softness in his eyes flares bright, replaced by something sterner: something protective. "Did he do anything to upset you? Did he hurt you?" 

She squeezes his fingers, looking up at him as she shakes her head. 

"No. No, Robb, nothing like that, it's just..." The tears choke her again, a hard lump in her throat that she tries to swallow down, and she leans forward to rest her head against his shoulder. 

"Just that you're in love with him." 

It's said so softly, accompanied by his hand gently cradling her head, and so it doesn't startle her. 

"Yes," she says, in a voice so small she wonders how it could be heard at all. It's something she hasn't admitted out loud: not to Edmure, not to herself, certainly not to Robb. She sobs against his shoulder, and she feels the kiss he presses to her hair. It's not the first time she's thanked any god who will listen that it's him she has to be caught in this mess with. That he's good and kind and gentle, that he cares about her in a way only Perwyn and Olyvar ever cared about her. 

"I'm in love with someone, too," he says, his voice so tender and so hushed that she looks up at him from his shoulder, gives his hand another squeeze. 

"Who?" She asks, watches the smile that goes straight to his eyes. 

"Her name is Jeyne. I don't think you've ever met her. She's...beautiful, and kind, and gentle. I think you'd like her. I hope you'd like her." 

"If you love her so much, I know I would." 

:"God," Robb says a moment later, when the only sound is the rumble of his car's engine around them. "What a mess we're all in." 

So fine is the line between laughter and tears that she can't help the first giggle that spills from her lips, or the one that follows. Can't help but laugh harder as Robb's own chuckle joins in with her giggles. 

"What are we going to do?" She asks, when their laughter has faded. "Robb, we...they're going to expect us to get married, soon enough. We can't do this forever. Or...well, we could, but wouldn't we be miserable?" 

"Spending my life with you wouldn't exactly be miserable," he says quietly. "But...it wouldn't be real, would it? We'd always be thinking about them." 

She nods, and he gives her shoulder a gentle squeeze. 

 "I'll figure this out," he says.  "We'll figure this out." 

And she trusts him. She trusts him more completely than she's ever trusted anyone, than she's ever even trusted her brothers. So she does the only thing left that she can do: she sits up again, wipes the tears from her eyes and picks up her purse, lets him walk her to her door as he always does. She hugs him tightly as good-night, thankful for the solidness of him, the embrace of his arms steadying around her. 

His parting words linger with her long after he's gone, long after she tucks herself into bed:

"I promise you, Roslin Frey," he'd said, catching her gaze just before she'd closed the door between them, "I promise that I won't let you be miserable." 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope at least one of you caught the "feet still resting on his face" typo, because I laughed for about ten minutes before I edited it.   
> Goodness gracious.   
> Edit your work, friends. Learn from my mistakes.


	3. (Look Into Your Eyes) And Suddenly I'm Helpless

_One Year Earlier:_

One moment she's on her feet, weaving through the crowds with her drink in one hand, scanning the backs of heads and the collars of shirts for Robb's auburn curls, and the next the ground is rushing up to meet her. The drink flies from her hand and she doesn't know where it lands, only that it's gone, and that she's thrown out her hands to break her fall. 

Her knee flares up with pain, the heels of her hands burn, but she's only had a split second to recognize the pain before there are hands on her shoulders, helping her back to her feet. 

"Roslin? Are you alright?" Edmure Tully still holds her securely by the shoulders, but she can't quite bring herself to look up at him - - not yet. Instead, she looks down at the scraped-up heels of her hands, experimentally closes her fingers, opens them again. 

"I'm....um. I'm fine. I don't know where Robb is, I..." 

"You're _bleeding_." 

"What?" 

Her hands might be scraped but they're not bleeding, which can only mean...

The fall had scraped right through her black tights, leaving a frayed hole and torn skin. Now that she realizes what's happened she can feel it, blood rolling down her leg. 

"...Oh." 

She looks down at the mess of her knee with such a helpless, puzzled look that Edmure chuckles: a low and gentle laugh that comes with a shake of his head. 

"Come on," he says, lightly gives her shoulders a squeeze before dropping his hands. "Let's get you cleaned up. Then we'll, ah - - - find Robb." 

His arm goes around her then, hand resting lightly at the middle of her back both to guide and protect her.

It makes her stupid, _stupid_ heart skitter, and she hopes he hasn't noticed the quick little intake of breath. 

From the first time she had met him, there had just been....something. She could feel it. Something she couldn't explain, could only experience....and bury down deep, where nobody could see it. Where it might just huddle up and hibernate, if she was lucky. But she wasn't lucky, and it hadn't hibernated, and every moment she had spent in his company for the last year had been a sort of quiet agony. Each time, she had only wanted the chance to spend more time with him, each time she had to remind herself it wouldn't matter, that it could never matter. That, to all the world, she was utterly in love with Edmure's nephew.

It was just like her, to fall in love so easily and so terribly. It was just like her to find herself with some kind of helpless schoolgirl crush on someone she could never have. 

The thoughts rush in upon her as he leads her through the crowded house and up a flight of stairs, removing his hand from her back (both to her relief and guilty disappointment) once they're away from the crush of the crowd. The upstairs halls are still and quiet, but Edmure seems to know where he was going. He leads her into a bathroom at the end of the hall, flicks the light on. 

"Have a seat," he says with a little grin, nodding toward the closed toilet. "And, uh..." 

He lifts a hand, scratches at the back of his head and looks away, and Roslin realized with a strange little start that he means for her to take the torn tights off. He studiously avoids looking at her while she does it, focuses on opening the mirror-fronted medicine cabinet to find band-aids until she's sitting on the closed toilet seat, holding balled-up, ruined black tights in her hands. 

Roslin stops breathing when Edmure kneels in front of her, a box of bandages and a tube of ointment in one hand, a damp washcloth in the other. And maybe it's her imagination, but there's a sort of pinkness to the skin around his neck, creeping up until its hidden in the reddish rough hair of his short beard. De sets the box of bandages down to cup his hand around her calf, just below the knee. 

"Hold still," he says, and she knows she's not imagining the roughness of his voice...she _couldn't_ have imagined it, nor could she have imagined the way it sends a shiver down her spine. 

She has imagined the touch of his hand, in guilty stolen moments, but never quite like this. The warmth she had imagined, the way his hands would swallow up her own, but she had never been able to imagine the rough rasp of callouses, the way he holds her leg as though it might shatter in his grasp. 

He swallows and she can see it in his throat, and she bites her lip, feels her breathing quicken despite her every effort at retaining calm. At least she can pretend it's the coolness of the cloth as it touches her knee that makes her gasp, though she wishes she hadn't done it at all. The noise lifts his eyes from her knee to her face, and all she can do is sheepishly smile. 

"It's cold," she whispers, watches in utter fascination as a half smile tugs at his lips, crinkles up the corner of one eye. 

"Sorry. It's better if I clean it." 

Gently, he cleans the rest of the scrape, gently pats it dry. Gently spreads a thin coat of ointment over it, the trace of his finger over her skin feather-light. 

She's almost disappointed when he presses the bandage to her skin, but when he does...he doesn't pull back. His hand curves back around her leg, the other reaching for her hand, unfurls the fingers to look down at her palm. 

For a wild, dizzy moment, she wonders if he's about to lift it to his lips, to kiss the scraped-up skin (and for a wild, dizzy moment he considers it, though that she doesn't know.) Instead, he simply holds her hand in his, looks up at her with concern. 

"You're sure you're alright?" 

He's close, so close. She could reach out and run her fingers through his hair, if....

She could lean forward and....

She is leaning forward, ever so slightly, without realizing she does it, without realizing he's leaning toward her, too, eyes half-lidded, his thumb stroking gently along the curve of her knee, she can feel his breath ghost lightly against her skin, until...

"We...we, um..." He draws back quickly, pulls his hand away from her knee and sits back on his ankles, gazing off somewhere just above her shoulder. "We should go find Robb. He'll be wondering where you are." 

He stands and takes the ruined tights from her hand, tosses them into the garbage bin, puts the bandages and ointment away, leaves the washcloth hanging over the bathtub faucet (he'll come back for it later, he decides, toss it in the laundry - - for now, he just needs to get them out of there, before he does something they'll both regret). 

"Edmure?" 

Her voice is so small in the echoey, tiled bathroom that she wonders if he can hear it...but he does. He turns to her, and for a moment (just a moment!) she's on the verge of telling him the truth. _I don't love Robb_ , she wants to tell him. _Not like that. And he doesn't love me, either, unless it's like another sister_. Most of all, she just wants to be bold enough to reach out for his hand, to tug him back to her again, to take that moment back. But it's gone, and she's never been bold like that, and her courage fails her. Instead, she only smiles up at him, watches some wary reserve melt out of his eyes. 

"Thank you." 

His smile, she thinks, must be almost as good as his kiss would have been. 


	4. Tell Me What You Want Me to Say

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, you! All of you! Thanks for sticking with this story so far. I thought I was 100% just writing it for myself. An audience of one. Seeing that people are actually reading it has made me so happy! 
> 
> On that note, please let me know if I ever make the timeline confusing. I'll always try to title/label the flashback chapters, and I don't think they'll be terribly frequent. 
> 
> This one starts out immediately following Roslin and Robb returning from the diner in Ch. 2!

_Present Day_

After the music of the party and the lights of the diner, her apartment is quiet and dim and comforting. Even the jingling tags of her Cavalier King Charles coming to greet her, all floppy ears and liquid eyes, seems quiet now. 

"Hello, Pudge," she whispers, scooping him up and burying her face against his silky fur and floppy ears, even as he twists to try to lick her face. She sets him down at last and checks his water, just in case the dog-walker had forgotten. And just like that, the rest of her night falls into easy routine: face washed and teeth brushed, the dress she had been wearing shed for pajamas, the alarm set for much-too-early the next morning. She has only just turned off the bathroom light, ready to crawl into her waiting bed, when several thunderous pounds on the door make her jump. Pudge's head jerks up from his paws and he barks, running off toward the door in a whirl of flying ears and wagging tail. 

She scoops him up again to quiet him, tip-toes toward the door on quiet feet to peer through the peephole...only to be met with the sight of Edmure Tully. 

It would make a liar out of her to say that her heart doesn't fly into her throat at the sight, full of some sort of childish and desperate hope...though hope for what, she just can't say. It won't matter what he says, will it? Tomorrow, this will all still be the same. 

But she still unhooks the chain, unlocks her door, and pulls it open. 

"Edmure?" 

Pudge just can't contain his delight, wriggling desperately in Roslin's grasp. He loves Edmure, he has from the first moment he met him, and every sight of him has this effect upon the little dog. (Roslin has never been able to help but feel that the little dog must know what she feels for Edmure, that his wriggly little self must reflect her own fluttery heart.) 

Edmure, so tired and solemn when she had first opened the door, smiles for Pudge. He reaches out to gently stroke a silky ear, very carefully not letting himself touch her as he does so. 

"I wanted to talk," he says, and looks up at her at last. She wishes that he hadn't: his eyes are just too much, too difficult to refuse.  
  


"Edmure," she says, determined to turn him away, determined to go back to her room and her empty bed and her alarm clock set so early. "It's very late." 

But she should have known that looking into his eyes would be a mistake, because they're yearning and sad and searching, and she knows before he says a word that she can't turn him away. 

"Roslin," is all he says at first, voice hoarse with the hour and the drinks and emotion. "Please." 

Standing in the doorway she looks at him, bites her lip and snuggles Pudge closer. Say no, she thinks. Send him away. Do the responsible thing like the good girl you are, and go to bed alone. Get whatever sleep you can so that you're not stuck letting the kids watch Sound of Music all day. 

But then she sighs. 

She steps back from the door, sets Pudge on the floor and closes the door behind Edmure. Takes her time with the locks and the chain. And he's just standing there, she knows. She can feel him there, waiting for her. 

"Why have you come here?" She asks, turning away from the door at last and folding her arms around herself. "You looked like you were having plenty of fun right where you were." 

"Damnit, Roslin!" He doesn't shout at her. He has never shouted at her. But he comes near enough now that it makes her flinch, makes her draw back, and she sees his regret for it flicker there, in his eyes. "I'm sorry. I'm _sorry_." For a moment, she isn't sure what he's apologizing for: the almost-shouting or what she had seen at the diner. "But what do you expect me to do, Roslin? You're the one who told me we shouldn't see each other, shouldn't even talk to each other. You're the one ignoring every call. So what do you want me to do?" 

Pudge, bored of human talk, ambles off to poke his nose through his basket of toys, leaving Roslin and Edmure to stand there in front of the door as though frozen. It's Roslin who breaks the spell at last, unable to stand there just _looking_ at him any longer. She perches on the edge of her couch, doesn't look at him when he comes to sit beside her. Close, so close, but not touching. He won't. She knows that he won't, not until she reaches out first. 

It's always been like that, with them. 

"What did you want to talk about?" She asks, and it's barely a whisper in the dim of her half-lit apartment. "I have to teach in the morning." 

"I know. Gods - - -" he draws a hand over his face, she can see the motion from the edges of her vision. His laugh, when it comes, is hollow. "I barely know those girls," he says at last, and she can feel herself recoiling, feel her blood running cold. "I met them at the bar. And their boyfriends, too." It's supposed to help, she knows. It's supposed to soothe her, but all she feels is halfway numb. "And then I look up," he says, his voice gone rough again, rough enough to earn her glance, a glance that is surprised to see that there are tears filming his eyes. "I look up, and there you are. And it feels like having the damn breath knocked out of me." 

Her own inhale is sharp, sympathetic, the echo of the feeling of seeing him there, so unexpectedly. 

"And then," he says, opens and closes the hand that rests on his knee, as though longing so much to reach out and touch her that he can't quite control it. "I saw you crying. And there wasn't a damn thing in the world I could do. So when I got Robb's text..." 

"Robb texted you?" 

There's a definite tinge of red around his neck, a flush she knows well. He hadn't known, she's sure, if he should have said anything about it. 

"...Yes. It must have been as he was leaving here." 

His eyes rove over her face, drinking her in, and it makes her want to crawl into his lap, pull his arms around her, curl so close against him that all barriers disappear. 

"What did it say?" 

He's leaning forward now, toward her, close enough that she can count the freckles on his face, faint as they are - - the ones mostly hidden by the red of his beard. 

"That he knew." 

Her shoulder, traitorous thing, has let itself rest against his arm, her fingers slipping under his. And just like that her hand is taken, fingers laced with his, held between both of his hands and lifted to his lips. "That I should come to you now, if...." 

He lowers their hands, still holds it with one while letting the other reach out to cup her face. Presses her hand to his chest, just above his heart. 

"If?" Her voice seems mere suggestion of a voice, small already, lost in the pounding of her own pulse, the way the whole world seemed to hum in anticipation. 

"If I loved you." 

And he says it so quietly, so solemnly, that she's sure it must be true. There's no room for joking in his voice, no sparkle in his eyes

_I promise you, Roslin Frey_ , Robb had said. _I promise that I won't let you be miserable_. 

"Gods be good," she whispers, reaches for him like someone drowning. Her hands in his hair, her lips meeting his in kiss after kiss after kiss, his arms wrapped around her (one hand warm at the base of her neck, the other arm wrapped right 'round her waist). 

"Don't tell me you don't want to see me anymore," he whispers against her skin, his lips leaving hers just to find her neck, trailing light kisses down it. She laughs, breathless, gently nudges his head away until he's looking at her again, his eyes very blue. Almost pleading. 

She pushes the auburn hair back from his forehead, cradles his head between her hands and rests her forehead against his. 

"Stay," she whispers. 

He carries her to bed that night, lays her down and crawls in beside her, makes her empty bed not nearly so empty. Wraps his arms around her and tucks her warm and safe against his side. She listens to the steady beat of his heart beneath her ear, feels relief course through her with every gentle stroke of his fingertips along her arm. 

She falls asleep knowing that her alarm will still chime much too early. She'll still have to propel herself from bed, drag herself through the day with very little sleep. 

But Edmure loves her, and when she wakes, he'll be there.

It's funny, though. Her last thought before sleep isn't of Edmure at all. 

_I promise you, Robb Stark,_ she thinks. _I promise I won't let you be miserable, either._


End file.
